


Be Yourself

by ramblingsofagaysian



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Flashbacks, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-02-08 12:29:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18623323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ramblingsofagaysian/pseuds/ramblingsofagaysian
Summary: Vanessa finds herself watching an interview/documentary of various people who are doing their bit to help teenagers learn a bit more about themselves. She's thrown back to being a teenager herself and takes some time to think about how far she's come.OrMy idea of what Vanessa's life during Section 28 might have been like





	Be Yourself

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting on my Google Drive for a couple of months because I was waiting for an embargo to lift but I've gotten impatient and wanted to share this with you. This was written before the vote on LGBT+ inclusive education in England had come up, so it might feel a bit off.
> 
> This is very much written from a bit of a Scottish perspective because some of this is based on real people and conversations.
> 
> P.S.- Can you tell I really like writing from Vanessa's perspective?
> 
> P.P.S.- Tags on mobile SUCK

Vanessa realises that she has a slight habit of scrolling through social media when she’s got time to kill. Everyone does, really. But it’s something she particularly noticed shortly after Charity had sent her into a small existential crisis over her sexuality.

 

Nothing like a good ol’ push out of the closet you didn’t even know you were in.

 

So that’s how she is, leaning against the kitchen counter waiting for the kettle to boil for a wee cuppa, phone in hand and scrolling down Twitter while Johnny and Moses are playing with their toys under the table in their imaginary fort.

 

The wonderful thing about the internet is the ability to share things. It’s not always a good thing, as the regular update of an old friend’s bowel movements on Facebook can tell you.

 

But there are a multitude of things that can be found out there. Lessons for anything you want to learn, a how-to on anything from makeup to changing your headlights; experiments that you’d never think of doing and you’d most certainly not want your kids to try; a trio of Australians dropping things from various heights just to see what happens; and pet videos that range from adorable to hilarious.

 

(The last one makes Vanessa want a dog, even though there are far too many people that need looking after for it to be feasible. She can dream though.)

 

There are also the stories that so many people out there are brave enough to tell. Strong enough and confident enough to show people that they exist, that others like them are not alone. The people who have lived and endured the cruelty of humanity and bear the scars to prove it. Those people remind her of Charity.

 

Vanessa has gone down a hole or two chasing these stories.

 

That’s how she notices an odd profile picture on Twitter. It’s a rainbow in the shape of a tie against a black background.  _ TIE. _

 

The kettle clicks on the opposite counter, she pours the water into her mug while still looking at her phone, making a cup of tea in the back room of the Woolpack is simply muscle memory at this point. She cocks an eyebrow, curiosity getting the better of her, and taps to see the profile.

 

_ The TIE Campaign,  _ it’s called,  _ Time for Inclusive Education.  _ It’s a Scottish campaign, it seems. Their aim to bring LGBTI-inclusive education into schools. To bring education and awareness to reduce the bullying that kids suffer, to try and change cultural thinking towards LGBT+ people, to make it positive.

 

\---

 

She suddenly remembers being 12 when Section 28 came into play. The controversy around it and the subsequent protests against it. But she also remembers those that supported it too. The Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph, The Salvation Army, all with Thatcher at the head.

 

She remembers not quite understanding the controversy, why it was part of the legislation in the first place. What was wrong with loving someone? To be like Ian McKellen or Freddie Mercury?

 

It had been plastered everywhere in the months leading up to its passing. She remembers the devastation on faces of protestors on the news. She remembers feeling her own heart sink too.

 

She remembers being 15, the full effect of Section 28 was visible in school. She watched as kids would be dragged by their bags, jackets, shirts, and thrown down to the ground. Slurs in heavy ink graffitied on jotters and bags. A few more bruises and black eyes on the faces of quiet folk in her classes. Girls being isolated in the corner of the changing rooms for her gym class.

 

She remembers the faces of her teachers. The pained look of those who had to turn a blind eye to the bullying, the look of glee on the ones who thought they deserved it.

 

One of her favourite teachers, Miss Duff, was a tall Irish woman with long ginger hair and a variety of piercings lined her ears. If you walked by her classroom during lunch, you could hear rock playing over the radio. You could see the pain in her eyes as she had no choice but to turn away from the bullying. Eyes that burned with a secret not safe to tell as a teacher.

 

Another of her favourite teachers, Ms Currie, was a tall woman with short dark hair and thick-rimmed glasses. She was from Scotland and taught maths, a lovely woman to speak to outside of class. She was a young teacher, not long qualified. But she was also one of the teachers who would turn with a wince when kids would throw words like daggers intended to kill. She couldn’t speak up about the harassment but she’d pick the kids, every one of them, and bring them into her classroom to console them, to make sure they weren’t too hurt and to tell them that it gets better.

 

She remembers being 18 and noticing the broken ladder of red lines littering the forearm of John, her best friend since they were in nursery together. She had asked him about it, late one night in May when they had gone for a walk after he called her saying that he didn’t want to be alone. He was a small guy, slim and short like her with a scruff of dirty blond hair atop his head and a cheeky lopsided smile, they could have passed for siblings if they wanted to.

 

That’s when he told her, with tears in his eyes. That he was gay, that he hated himself for it. It’s not like she hadn’t noticed how defaced his school work was, that the words lay stark against the fabric of his bag in thick ink. Even carved into the back of his notebook.

 

It’s not like she hadn’t noticed his eyes linger on some of the boys either, or giving his full attention to Mr Coats, that one hot student chemistry teacher they had for a year. John was good at giving his full attention to him, just not paying attention to the class. And he’d never mentioned a girl he was interested in either, not even a celebrity crush. Not one.

 

They’d been friends for years, joined at the hip since they’d met. What kind of friend would she be if she hadn’t seen this coming?

 

She does what every best friend of 14 years would do. She wraps her arms around him and hugs him tight until her jumper is soaked with tears and his sobs have calmed down to a whimper. She tells him that it changes nothing, that she still loves him and he’s still her best friend. That it’s okay and nothing will ever change that.

 

\---

 

They found him in October in the woods behind the school, a month after they’d gone back to school after the summer holidays. It had been too much and he couldn’t take it anymore.

 

No one says anything to her when she returns to school a week after the funeral. The bullies don’t even look shameful or have any remorse and it makes Vanessa shrink a little more into herself.

 

\---

 

She wonders, 25 years on, if John would have done the same for her. Or if he would have pointed out how her behaviours mirrored his own and nudged her in the right direction, if she could have lived her life knowing what she wanted instead of waiting until her 40’s to work that part of herself out. If they could have lived their life together with their respective partners, happy and healthy.

 

\---

 

Now armed with a cup of tea, she continues down her Twitter hole and finds a video on the TIE Campaign page.  _ #BeYourself.  _

 

It appears to be an interview-style short film. The theme seems to be around people who have been successful in life and are also LGBT+. To prove that it does get better after school.

 

The film shows a true rainbow of people. East Asian, South Asian, white, old, young, men, women, non-binary, trans people, all with a wide variety of careers. Nurses, engineers, politicians, ministers, footballers, retail workers, trade union activist and officials, and more. All with something different to say, their own story to tell.

 

There’s a young man, a wild mess of dark brown hair, waving hands, and a wide smile. He has a short beard and is wearing a shirt and jumper combo that Vanessa herself has worn many times. He says he works for both Unite the Union and the Scottish Trades Union Congress.

 

He talks about biphobia that he’s heard and experience in work and even amongst the queer community. About being told that he’s greedy, that it’s just a phase, that he’s actually gay and just won’t admit it, that he has to pick one.

 

She wonders if Charity has ever been told any of these things. If she’s ever had to justify who she is, amongst everything else.

 

There’s a much older man, he appears to be about 10 years older than herself. He’s got a bit of a receding hairline, the rest cut short and a trimmed beard, much lighter in colour to the young man’s. The lines around his eyes and the playful lilt in his voice tell her that he’s spent much of his life smiling and laughing. She notices the gold band that sits on his left ring finger as he gestures to the air.

 

He speaks of the bullying he suffered in school, the events still slightly haunting his eyes when he talks about it. Now, he wears his scars open and with pride and she wonders if this is what John could have been like. Happily married and proud.

 

There’s a woman, perhaps around her own age, who is almost the spitting image of her favourite maths teacher. She’s a college lecturer and she also has a band on her left ring finger, though this time silver.

 

She talks about when she was still a temporary lecturer, young and new to the job. She talks about the homophobia coupled with the sexual harassment that she received from other lecturers. How it made her angry and she refused to take it without fighting back. How it ultimately led to her involvement with the Trade Union Movement, that she’s still fighting now but for those that will come behind her so that they don’t have to face what she did.

 

She’s so like Ms Currie it’s uncanny and it makes her wonder if she faced this too, if it ever stopped after she’d left school. She wonders if it would have been better, if she were to start her teaching career now instead of 30 years ago, amidst Section 28 and Thatcher’s era of Traditionalism and so-called “family values”.

 

There’s a young Chinese woman with hair cut into a fauxhawk with pink highlights throughout. She’s wearing a t-shirt that has “I like girls in a gay way” written in a speech bubble pointing up, it makes Vanessa smile and she wonders if the t-shirt was a custom design or she’d just managed to find it somewhere. She looks to be in her early 20’s, but she sounds much older than that.

 

She talks about trying to find your place, to find where you fit in amongst everyone and finding people who are like you. Not just as a LGBT+ person, but as a Chinese person too. The disparity between the two parts of her identity causing issues within, mostly, the LGBT+ community. That despite what people would think, it’s actually more difficult to find Chinese representation than it is to find lesbian representation.

 

It had never occurred to Vanessa that there would be racism within a community of systematically oppressed people, that it would be an issue amongst people who have been discriminated against for being who they are. It makes her brow furrow and she makes a mental note to look into it later.

 

It makes her think about if she’s found her own place in this world.

 

She didn’t exactly think she’d end up here when she was a kid, in a small village tending to farm animals and pets alike, in her 40’s with a son and a  fiancée .

 

But that’s the thing, this  _ is _ where she is.

 

She has her job that she loves, it can be hard work but it’s worth it. All the years of studying and pulled all-nighters that she’s suffered. It’s worth the late callouts and muck and the sheer amount of wrestling that’s involved. She has Tracy, an amazing sister she never thought she would ever have. She has a good relationship with her dad, even if things started off a bit rocky on Frank’s part. She has her son, her little Johnny, an unexpected joy in her life, even if she wasn’t sure she’d do well with him in the beginning. And she has her  fiancée.

 

She has Charity, the woman she loves with all of her heart and soul.

 

If you’d told Vanessa any time up to the last year and a half that she’d be head over heels in love, and engaged, to a woman, she’d have told you to shove off. Yet here she is.

 

The end of the video has everyone featured saying a few last words;

 

Be proud. Be brave. Be confident. Be strong. Be unashamed. Be unapologetic.

 

Be yourself.

 

The video ends and Vanessa feels her heart swell.

 

She looks up and Moses and Johnny are still playing together and she can hear Noah and Charity talking as they come through into the house from the pub, the sounds of the pub filtering through the open door behind them.

 

_ This is her life _ , she thinks, and she looks around the room.

 

She has her weird thrown together family, she gained her confidence, she’s been strong through life’s misgivings, she’s unapologetic in who she is, and she is proud. Proud of all of it, and every single part of her little family and it makes her smile.

 

Because she, Vanessa Woodfield, is completely and utterly unashamedly herself.

 

And John would be proud of that.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a lot of feelings about Vanessa and her past and I just want to write so. damn. much. about her and what shaped her to being who she is now.
> 
> I also know a weird amount of information about equalities history in the UK and I figured I might as well use it.
> 
> The TIE Campaign IS a real campaign and has had quite a lot of success over the past few years and I thought it might be good to raise awareness of this campaign to our comrades South of the border.


End file.
